hunger is the purest sin
by vodkaquiet
Summary: When Mikasa is framed for the murder of the Empress and the abduction of her son, Eren, she is visited by a strange man who bestows her with a gift that sets her on the path of revenge. Dishonored AU. Levi x Mikasa
1. Chapter 1

Her blood encompassed his small body.

_This…_

_I'm losing my family again._

He was on his knees. His hands pressed to the wound, but the blood wouldn't stop. "Mom," He kept saying. His voice wore thin until he was choking on a sob. Tears slide down his throat and his hands trembled. His fingers were curled around hers.

_"Eren," _Mikasa almost called him his name. Memories of hide and seek and skipping stones and the smell of freshly baked bread and the feeling of being tickled with lilac petals until the point of laughter turned to ash in her mouth. Happiness was a tightrope to walk. She had become more of a friend than a bodyguard. Guilt was a dirty needle in her arm. It was an infection that seeped through her.

"Get up."

He was on his knees. His eyes twisted up to the sky, but there was no sky above him – only the ornate gazebo stared down at his grief stricken face. There was no earth beneath him to bury his loss. He prayed to a god that didn't exist because denying god was easier to swallow than the thought of their prayers falling on deaf ears.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention and she gripped her sword tightly. They were surrounded. The assassins were fast. Impossibly fast. They moved like a fevered dream and left bloodstains in their wake. Her knuckles were white and sweat beaded down her forehead irritatingly.

He couldn't move. His legs were going numb, crumpled under his body. He rocked back and forth like arrhythmic lovers locked in an embrace. She grabbed the imperial heir by the scruff of his winter coat and pulled him to his feet.

"Run."

Mikasa remembered her mother had said the same. _Run. Run Mikasa run. _But she hadn't. She couldn't. All she could do was watch helplessly. That was what Eren did as his mother was killed before his eyes. As he was pulled from her grasp.

"Mikasa," His screams drew distant as he was dragged further away from her until all she could hear was her heart beating violently.

Mikasa was knocked to the ground. She was on her stomach and there was blood on her chin. Her heart swelled with rage and pulled apart her ribcage. She would break every bone in her body to get him back — _to keep him safe_. But that was the lie. She believed it more so than he – a child, a prince at that – there was no safe. Not after this, not even before. They had been deceiving themselves.

Opulence encircled them, but the granite and the silk was not the city beyond the walls. She couldn't protect him. She couldn't shield him from that world. They would eat him alive.

Her blade was kicked aside. A hand fisted her hair and flipped her onto her back. It brought tears to her eyes, but she didn't cry.

Mikasa heard a man's voice. "Don't kill her,"

She couldn't see their faces. They wore masks and she didn't recognize the uniform. The tip of his blade scratched her skin lightly, but with a sigh he sheathed it.

She could see worn leather boots out of the corner of her eye. A kick to the head and it was lights out – _blackness._

* * *

The ground she lay on was cold and running with cracks. With heavy eyes she looked up at the sky. It was a pretty, textbook shade of blue. The clouds were still. They looked almost painted on.

Mikasa got to her feet hesitantly. Her breathing stilled as she took in her surroundings.

A fallen city floating in the blue, edifices drifted out of time. The walls were spider veined with crevices and the familiar smell of blood coated her lungs.

Everything she had ever felt seemed to erode. All her anger and fear ran on like suicidal sentences until they dripped dry. She was washed blinding clean. Her heart sank (or rather leapt from the highest balcony) when she saw a man or at least what she thought to be a man standing with his back to her in complete silence. The silence ate away at her.

His presence lingered like a vomitus stench until he faced her.

He looked more like a demon or a god than a man.

His skin was bone white and drawn tightly over the bones of his face. He had dark hair and darker eyes. There were shadows gathered under his eyes and his mouth was a thin line.

"Is this a dream?" She asked.

"A dream," He seemed amused, "No."

"Then," She was a curious thing, with eyes more dead than alive and pale skin laced by unruly strands of dark hair.

"Am I dead?" Was her second question and again his answer was no.

"Where am I?" _If this wasn't a dream and she wasn't dead then she still had reality to face and that reality was the Empress was dead and she had lost her charge. _She had blood on her hands. Blood she'd sworn to protect.

"Where am I?" She asked again – louder this time. His silence drew her attention to the scene of the Empress dead. It was her sword that killed her. Mikasa stood over her body.

"This isn't what happened," Her voice was more determined than confident. Her memory was foggy. Remembering hurt and not just emotionally. Her head throbbed when she tried to recall the order of events, but she knew she would never hurt the Empress – least of all Eren.

"Why are you sawing me this?"

Her shadow smiled saccharinely. Her lips were cracked with blood and her hands were bruised and she couldn't remember smiling with dust in her lungs.

"Because you need to understand,"

"Understand what?"

"Who you're up against,"

"Tch," She clenched her hands into fists. "I'm not scared."

He smirked. "You should be. If not for yourself then for him,"

The apparition turned to a small boy.

_Eren…_

Her heart seized up. Her hand reached out instinctually for his, but she knew he was no more or less real than this place. Her fingers closed around thin air.

"Is he?"

"Alive?" smiled Levi, "Yes."

She didn't know how long she had been here. Time seemed to stand still as if it waited on her instead of her constantly chasing it only to have it slip through her fingers.

"What's your name?"

_What is this, twenty questions? _It had been awhile since he had had a guest in his home and his etiquette had been left out in the rain to oxidize.

"Levi," He answered softly.

"What kind of name is that?"

"It's French, I think."

"We're a long way from France."

"It was a long time ago. I don't remember who I got it from."

His name was a trinket in some dusty, forgotten box he only thought about on rare occasion.

He reached for her hand. He didn't have to. It was a courtesy. He could have marked her without touching her. He could have done anything to her.

"What," She paused to carefully grate her voice around her words, "Are you doing?"

"I want to give you a gift."

"A gift?" She repeated.

"To help you on your path… You fascinate me. I'm interested in what you do next."

"Thanks, but no." She looked around for an exit, but there were none. They were alone here.

"You'll die without it." But as soon as he said it he realized she didn't care about her own life. "Eren will die."

She let him take her hand into his.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the day of her execution.

She made a game out of how she would die.

Strung up in the streets, a prick of poison under her skin—

_No._

The crowd wanted blood. Want was such a small word.

_Needed, the crowd needed blood. _

They would cheer. They needed to wrap the injustices of the world around her like a silk ribbon that blew brazen in the celestial sky. They needed to hear her bones crack and for her to bleed for them.

The guards cut her hair.

Shorter, shorter than it already was and ugly like a boy's.

_Good._ Mikasa thought.

She had never understood why women wore their hair long and wept over their locks like precious treasures.

All jagged lines and rough edges. Their hands were unkind, grasping at handfuls and yanking her head back. Every time their fingers brushed against her skin her stomached tightened into knots.

Stray strands stuck to her sweaty neck.

There was no point to the ritual other than humiliation. To show her that she was beneath their heel and they could crush her into the ground anytime they like felt it.

Her hands were bound. The binds cut into her wrists and surfaced memories she thought she'd buried with the bodies.

They were afraid of her. She could smell it on them. Even with her hands behind her back and her breathing shallow from her cracked ribs.

She smiled like an animal tearing itself apart to get free of its chains.

"I don't like my haircut." She laughed. Her laugh was bone dry. With the slightest breeze it could be blown away.

"In case you hadn't noticed, sweetheart, this isn't a barber shop." said the older guard. His hair was graying and he smelled of bourbon.

"I'm not your sweetheart."

The back of his hand struck her face sharply. It stung like an insect bite under the wires of her skin.

Her lip split and bubbled with blood.

She spat at the guard. A good wad of blood and saliva rolled down his cheek. That only got her another slap.

Pain seemed duller. Not the flecks of red dancing across her field of vision she remembered. Even if the pain was dull it was something and that was better than the gnawing emptiness she felt making a home out of her bones.

"One more word out of you and I''ll-"

"And you'll what?" She spat.

"Beat me? I'm already a dead woman." Mikasa said it like she meant it. Like she was ready to slip the noose around her own neck and jump.

Guiltily she wished for death. Death would be merciful and soft like sleep that never came.

Death was coming for her with vengeance, but not today. She couldn't die yet. Not when Eren still needed her.

He chuckled. "I'm not going to beat ya. That'd be no fun for me. Get my knuckles bloody... have to hear it from the Mrs.'s."

He wrestled with the clasp of his belt. His smirk deepened the lines in his face.

The younger guard with the amber eyes that never met hers made a sound at the back of his throat.

"What?" His eyes jerked up to meet the younger man's gaze, but his smirk didn't drip like the bloody meat sack she wanted to make out of his face.

"Hasn't she had enough?" He asked.

"Don't tell me you've gone soft."

"No." His voice was cold.

Mikasa knew better not to trust good intentions. They were rarely pure.

She held a spiteful laugh between her cracked lips. Her disgust thinly veiled.

The grizzled haired-man swallowed his lust silently. His eyes had enough heat to say he wasn't finished with her, but what he didn't know was that he would be dead before he ever laid his hands on another woman.

The adolescent wiped the blood from her face. He looked younger than her by a good couple of years, but her skin was marred with the backhand of experience.

"Thank you." The words were glass shards in her throat. She'd bleed out before she ever meant them.

He undid her binds. _The poor fool._

She clutched at his hands with conceivable gratitude.

He let a moment of warmth pass between them before shaking her off.

"What's your name?" This wasn't the time or place for niceties.

He didn't answer. He only looked at her with something akin to pity. Her hand closed sharply around the rusted metal of the cell key she had taken off of him in his moment of kindness. Apart of her knew he had let her take it. He wasn't stupid, but he was a boy. And boys always had for girls they perceived as broken. The notches of the key dug into her skin, but the momentary sensation of pain wasn't enough to wake her up.

Clean-shaven and translucent skin and gawky limbs she tried not to look at him. She tried not to drown in the guilt for what would come next. They would blame him; do worse than she ever could to him, if they learned of his betrayal. She would be doing him a favor if she snapped his neck right here, right now. Get it over with, one less of them to worry about, but he wasn't one of them. He dressed in their clothes and spoke their vulgar tongue, but he was as much an outsider as she was – slated for the slaughter under their watchful gaze.

She told herself that there were no good men to justify her actions. Only ones who held their crosses close to chests. Too afraid to shatter the illusions the church had put in them. For fear of god, but god wasn't coming for them. She was.

Mikasa ran her fingers over the tattoo. Blood and ink he spilled into her dreams; waking and sleeping he lingered like a memory that wouldn't be trampled with booze. When he had touched her a shiver ran down her spine. She still felt him etched in the marrow of her bones.

_Levi._ He had said his name was.

Mikasa could feel the murmur of another heart beating in tune to hers. She wondered if he could feel her like she felt him.

Her nails were bitten to the quick and her hair smelled worse than the putrid vomit they served up at dinnertime. Hunger twisted inside of her. It howled like a ravaged dog.

Her skin forgot the sun. Her hair forgot the wind. But she never forgot the sensation of time passing. It grew in her like a tumor. She didn't know how long she had been down here, rotting. It wasn't herself she feared for. It was Eren. Anything could have happened to him, anything but death. She'd know if he was gone from this world.

She turned the key over in her hands. Freedom… but out of chains, on the other side of the bars she was still a prisoner. 

Her bare feet recoiled from the freezing floor. She moved like a ghost through the darkest corridors of an ex-lover's mind. Silently, but lethally, ready for the first taste of blood.

She didn't have her sword or her coat. All she wore was her determination to get Eren back and keep him safe. This time she would keep her promise. Her hands clutched into fists. They felt empty without the cold steel of her blade.

There were too many guards watching the exit. She could feel their eyes inside their skulls. They flicked back and forth tiredly until half-dropping into a wakeful sleep.

Mikasa slipped pass the first dozen watchmen without a sound. She was small and light on her feet and the moonless night that streamed through the stutters took her in as one of its own – swallowing her whole.

The mosaic floor was stained with blood, but not a single scream broke the silence.

_There. There was her escape. _She could almost feel the night air on her clammy skin. _And there was the guard who had beaten her. _

Mikasa had always had a penchant for revenge. It coursed through her like her own blood.

She remembered the first time she had taken a life. She had liked it. She shouldn't have. She knew that. It made her feel powerful. Like her bones couldn't be broken, like her skin couldn't be bruised, like her heart couldn't be touched by anything or one. The blood dripping off the blade didn't scare her. It had woken a dark hubris in her veins.

She wanted to make him squeal like the pig he was. She wanted him to remember her in the next life, but there wasn't time for her indulgences. Only for her hunger to be sated.

He stunk of cigarettes and spirits. The foul odor masked her own as she stuck to his shadow. Her hand snaked around the hilt of his blade, unsheathing it and pressing the cold metal against his throat silently.

His breathing stilled and she inhaled his fear. Holding his eyelids open with her bloodied hands she made him watch as his life slipped away.

Eren missed the smell of her. Old leather and Scotch mist when she pulled him to her and he buried his face in her coat. He could breathe in her arms. She kissed the top of his head and let him stay in her embrace until he pushed her away. He had to. He had to break the embrace too soon… always too soon because eternity wasn't long enough in her arms.

"I'm not a child." He would say. Or some variant of it, the words grew bitter on his tongue.

It was true. He was almost a man now. But when she looked at him she didn't see the hunger of a man. Hunger enough to scorch the earth and drink the seas dry. She saw joy and wonder and innocence she never had the luxury of surrendering to. He still had faith. He still wanted to see the world.

Eren shifted in his sleep, if it could be called that. He was curled up on the cold, hard floor and woke to darkness. The sun hadn't risen yet and when it did it struggled to get through the boarded up window.

He heard a rustle. The floorboards creaked under footsteps. Light as they were.

"Who's there?" His throat was sore and dry and the words came out in a low voice that made him sound much older than he was.

There was no answer. He reached for what… a sword? He didn't know how to use one. He had asked Mikasa once, begged her more like, but she had looked at him and said with much too soft a smile for her face, "You don't ever need to learn how to fight. I'll protect you."

Even if he did know how he wasn't sure he could take a life. Not without first knowing who he was running through with his blade.

"It's okay," shushed a boy, shaggy blonde hair in his bright blues, but he knew better than anyone that it wasn't okay. "I was told to bring you something to eat and drink…it's not much and not very good but,"

Before he could finish the tray was pulled away from him. Eren gulped down the dirty water and sour bread. Hunger had hollowed his bones, but it hadn't made the food go down any easier.

"Take it easy." There was an almost smile in his voice. Eren looked at the stranger. He wasn't like the others. He was younger, considerably younger and smaller. He looked as much a prisoner of this place as he did.

"You're safe here."

"They tell you to say that too?"

"No." He lied.

Eren didn't look up from the crumbs of food on the plate. "Where is here?"

"A whorehouse," He said bluntly. "I grew up here."

"Is this the safest place they could think to put me?" Eren laughed. He knew he was valuable to his captives. Why else keep him alive? But he didn't know why.

"I'm Eren and you are?"

"Armin." He said finally. "I should get back before they wonder what's taking so long. I'll try to get you more food."

Eren smiled. He had never had a friend before. Other than Mikasa, but they weren't really friends. Or at least they weren't supposed to be. He had no one else growing up and loneliness had made a beast of his soul.


End file.
